Tag Archives: was

She Wanted More

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

Honeysuckle Kumar wanted More. More of what, she was not quite sure. Perhaps more space to figure it all out.  

Theoretically Honey (as she was known as to friends and family) had Enough and should have Nothing to Complain About. A high earning husband, a software developer who took his role of provider seriously. Twins, Hari and Jasmin, who recently took up places at good universities. The mortgage on their detached three bedroom house in a middle class (albeit boring) area was paid off.

Continue reading →

Christmas Party for One

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

            Owen walked the dog down the lane and turned towards the Norman castle. It was very quiet there, befitting Christmas eve. The Teifi gorge around two sides of the ruin was invisible, making its threat of a blind descent into the underworld stronger than ever. The dog was nervous. Usually it loved the lane, its smells. In pitch black Owen was about to turn back when, atop one of the castle’s walls, he saw a figure, like a lonely guard defending his prince’s grounds centuries after his master’s death. He looked again and the solitary warrior had vanished. He and the dog both slunk home with their tails between their legs, unsettled.

Continue reading →

It’s My Party

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

I can tell you this, it was the worst thing ever. One minute I’m whole and healthy and the next I’m draped over the pavement with a spine in two bits and no movement in my lower half. RTA they call it, huh, more like EOL, or end of life as it was.

Long story short, it could have been much worse – my top half works pretty well, but nothing from the waist down. It’s stunning what medics can do to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Family rallied round and helped where the wheelchair couldn’t go. I moved in with my parents (for a while) so they could share the work of looking after me. Carers cared, and a PA arranges things that need arranging: meals fetched, clothes washed, library books changed, shoes laced, soft voices, no rows (I miss the rows).

Continue reading →

Carol and the Case of the Suspicious Neighbours

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

“We’ve been infiltrated,” said Carol, scanning the assembled members of the W.I. “I saw our cake recipe on Val Clark’s shopping list in Tesco this morning.”

“But… it’s only a Victoria Sponge!” said Julie.

Carol flung her arms in the air. “How many times do I have to say it? Use the code name!”

It was fair to say that former Superintendent Carol was finding retirement a struggle. It had only been six weeks but already she was exasperated.

Continue reading →

Which Way?

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

Walking out of the town hall Aldo turned to me: ”Nan, isn’t Alan Parson wonderful. He can get this country back to the way it should be.”

Looking at him, I sighed. He had the look of the converted, his eyes shining at the thought of a wealthy life for all, poor boy. I should really keep my thoughts to myself but that man was dangerous, all his talk fantasy to lure the youngsters in. 

”My Mam told me about a guy who broadcast during the war; his name was Lord Jaw Jaw . The broadcasts sound very similar to that man, only he was trying to get us to surrender promising he would make us all a wonderful life under Titler. ”

Continue reading →

A night out on Shambhala 752B

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

“ACCESS GRANTED.”

The door slid soundlessly aside.

“Christ, man,” Jessie whispered, awestruck. “How’d you manage to do that?”

I smiled in what I hoped was an enigmatic way. “Easy, I hacked the list.”

“But —”

“But what? It’s uncrackable? Nothing is if you try hard enough. Now get your arse in there before a security patrol notices.”

Continue reading →

Gina’s List

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

The policeman, I forget his name already – Masters? Marsden? – reclines in his seat and regards me with a gaze that is probably intended to be intimidating but can only be described as ‘cute.’ It’s true what they say about the police looking younger as you age.

“Tell me about your conversation with Gina Montrose on Monday,” he says. “You were overheard talking about Marco Conti.”

Continue reading →

There’s a hole in my bucket

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

This was a row that had simmered for years but hadn’t yet been defused. It was an underground river of molten lava that threatened to erupt but, apart from the odd burps of hot magma, remained sluggishly subterranean and unacknowledged.

The accelerant was the  proposed retirement, in five years’ time, of Joan and Hywel. Each had busy and fulfilling jobs – which had masked their need to discuss points of incompatibility and irritation. However, they were both keen to leave the worlds of work for the worlds of…..well this was the main problem.

Continue reading →

I Have Never Forgotten

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

For Uzma, joining her local Creative Writing Circle was the challenge she felt ready for, a therapy of sorts. When she wrote, secrets flowed from her pen, bypassing her brain and heart into prose on the page. They told of the secrets she kept, the secrets she revealed and the secrets she told herself.

It was as if this week’s writing prompt was beckoning her to confront all her secrets at once. Let’s do this, she thought…

Continue reading →

Are We on the List?

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

            The Beynons woke to find a wall around their house. Hearing workmen behind the wall, Fred bellowed: ‘What’s occurring?’

            ‘National plan,’ came a muffled voice.

            ‘Keeping others out or us in?’ Dora shouted. Her mind was quicker than her husband’s.

            ‘I’m just doing what I’m told.’

            ‘How do I get to work?’ Fred yelled. ‘How does Alice get to school?’

Continue reading →

That Blinking List 

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

As Howard opened the washing machine and pulled out his clothes, his heart sank; everything was blue. His favourite white shirt was now tie-dyed, his jumper had shrunk small enough to fit Albie, his grandson.

Margy had only been gone three days and he was failing miserably. He really had tried to follow her list. Some of the things seemed a bit extreme like polishing all the surfaces every day. Why when there was only him there?

Margy, at sixty eight, had got herself a last minute free holiday with Faye, whose husband had a chest infection. It was Margy’s first holiday without him.

Continue reading →

Portrait of a Man on Fire

Posted on by under 2025, March 2025 - Heat

On the 29th of May, I was sent off to Joseph Dahl’s townhouse. He was often seen strolling around Caden Street or by the lake in Muriel Park, wishing everyone a good hullo, usually while dressed in a grey suit tailored from JR Parking’s and wearing a straw hat. A habit which made him the menace of a few penny counters and good Samaritans, but the local policemen regarded him as more an itch than any serious threat.

“Some people,” he said as he gripped my hand in his leathery paw, “can’t understand the spiritual life, they’ll chant their vows come Sunday but rarely put those promises into practice.”

“How about it?” asked his not wife, not girlfriend, Susannah, who at that moment lazed upon the sofa. “Do you swear by Christ or by Odin?”

Continue reading →

Mangoes and Mangroves

Posted on by under 2025, March 2025 - Heat

“Nothing worse than unripe tropical fruit”, muttered Garnet to no-one in particular as she stabbed the pallid orange cubes in their plastic punnet. Mango was meant to be fleshy, aromatic and messy, not like these bullets of sadness.

And that’s all it took for Garnet to book a one way ticket home to northern Queensland. London had seemed like a good time, at the time. Snow, centuries old buildings, Big Ben, quick trips to the continent, the promise of a French boyfriend. The reality was a low wage nannying job, a mouldy bedsit, gun metal skies and loneliness as a constant companion.

Queensland didn’t have a summer; it was either the wet season or the dry season. The wet was Garnet’s favourite. It came to her in her dreams through the smell of watermelons, ylang ylang and warm rain on hot tarmac. The memory of humidity hugged her like a long lost lover.

Continue reading →

Love Letter

Posted on by under 2025, March 2025 - Heat

The walk to his home filled me with anxiety.

The cold air bit at my red-hot cheeks and my boots clipped along the uneven pavement. Perhaps these were signs. Omens of what was to come. If they were, I did not heed them.

I continued to tramp briskly toward my destination and in the distance, I saw him standing outside his door awaiting my arrival.

This wasn’t the way I wanted to do this. I had wanted to drop the letter in and run away, leaving him to reel in its indulgent vulnerability alone. However, pushed by the needs of others I’d been made to forewarn him, or at least alert him to my impending presence, and now I must face him in a less romantic fashion.

Continue reading →

Black Honey

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

She’s a good egg, our Fi. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be suitable for the job. That’s why we allow her keep us. We are the keepers of the keepers.

We see everything. When we buzz around waggling to one another, we’re not only chasing nectar. We’re assessing the mental state of the people and communicating potential danger. Forget being a ‘fly on the wall.’ Flies don’t care. It’s the bees who watch, listen and help.

Take Ian Jones next door. He had a near-miss with death only last month. He was smoking a cigarette beside the azaleas in his front garden whilst I busied myself with the foxgloves. What’s dangerous about that, you ask, aside from the obvious? It’s true that the smoking will get him eventually, but that’s not the sort of thing we get involved in. On this occasion I could tell from his stance, the faraway look in his eyes, and the slightly acidic smell of his perspiration, that he was planning on this being his last cigarette before taking his own life. Well, those things and my complex assessment of his mood over recent weeks.

Continue reading →

IT’S NOT A BUDGIE !!

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

Wilf hovered  over the birdcage, eyeing it with affection. He had to admit Polly did look a little large and she did seem to enjoy a bit of raw meat.

He’d got the chick from a stranger in the pub who said it was a baby parrot. Scruffy thing it was and looked starving. Something in the way it looked at him pulled his heart strings .

”How much for him, bearing in mind it looks half dead ?”

Continue reading →

The hunted

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

“Hello?”

Beams of light sliced the darkness, and she shrank into the corner, shivering. Hopefully they’d not see her, move on, and she could get back to eking out her existence on whatever she could forage at night time, and the small creatures that fell into the crude traps she lay near the entrance to the cold, dark, cave system.

Maybe, she thought, as footsteps echoed, getting louder and closer, that was what’d drawn them into the depths, that she’d been careless and left signs, indicators of her existence. Whatever had got them here, they weren’t leaving.

Continue reading →

I’m here to rescue you!

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

Measuring time was next to impossible. No clocks, no sunlight, no signs from the outside world.

Smith had called out in his windowless cell, heard his voice echoed down the dingy corridor and yet there were no noises in response. No rumble of traffic, no coughing or shuffling of feet, no bellowing “to keep it down,” not even a crackle from the pipes or the creek of a floorboard. The silence outside was deafening and the only sounds Smith could hear were made by his own body.

Continue reading →

Rescue dogs make the best breed

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

“The sedative is starting to take effect now”.

I began to tell the vet of her uncertain start to life but hesitated. That didn’t seem important anymore, it was the here and now, this exact moment, and I found myself lost in the vibrations of her gentle snores, the soft rise and fall of her warm breath.

She was absolutely and unashamedly my child substitute. As one half of a childless lesbian couple, a puppy was bound to become our baby, and neither of us ever denied it. Still, it was my idea to go looking for a pup and when I met her, I knew she was the only one that would do.  

Continue reading →
error: Content is protected !!